Friday, October 5, 2012

Pre Preschool

E with a rice beard
What is mom to think when all three boys pull up a chair and sit quietly while looking at books for 20 minutes straight...this is awesome but is this normal?!
C
When he hears a siren, Eli points into the air and says very excitedly 'oye, oye' (listen, listen). It's exactly what I do : )
T playing peek a boo
E lining up his cars
eyebrows fully raised, yes it's Thomas : )
Eli with a cheeky smile
Tractor!
milk delivery boy
Fearing a monumental mess I haven't brought out the paint sets at home so I was very happy when they had painting this day at the kids museum.
All I had to do was wash their hands!
C and T

Here is a very puzzling update. I made kale chips (kale + salt + olive oil + oven) and Phil and I thought they were phenomenal. I pretty much can predict what the boys won't like correctly 99% of the time but that doesn't stop me from getting them try new stuff. I was sure they'd take one bite and go running in the opposite direction. Boy was I wrong, Eli liked them ok, Caleb was pretty into them, but Thomas couldn't get enough of them! Go figure : )

As the title implies I enrolled the boys in pre-preschool. It is a home based program where we have a teacher come once a week for about 1-2hrs depending on the boys attention spans and mood. The boys teacher is more like mom's teacher meaning she helps me come up with goals and age appropriate activities to do with the boys so that they can learn all that they are capable of. I am no early childhood development expert so this is a HUGE help for me. A few goals I have set for us are: 

1) is to learn our basic shapes 
2) start letter recognition, the boys can all make and repeat the 'c' 'e' and 't' sound so I'd like to start with these three letters since it's the boys initials : )
3) get better at taking turns 

Their teacher did an ASQ (we've done like a million of these already) and of course the only delay they show is in speech (more on that later, I don't think they are too far behind). All the boys got a perfect score on their fine motor skills : ) I'm not surprised since the boys build some pretty cool looking structures with their duplo-legos, are constantly buckling things, they like to line up their cars, and they can drink from a cup without spilling (but I'm not ready to let go of sippy cups yet). Their teacher was impressed at how well the boys know their colors (we have been working on that for a while now). I did some color sorting activities with the boys to test them. Using their duplos the boys were correct most of the time identifying red, yellow, orange, blue, green, white, and black.  

We are on week three and the first two sessions were lots of formalities so really we've only had one day of real pre preschool. The boys drew and we attempted to get them to trace a circle. Then we bowled with empty coffee cans that their teacher brought us and we tried to nicely take turns playing. The rest of the week we try to repeat these activities a few times.  

Here is a video of the boys at the meeting being not so good, they are worse at times and they are better at times but for the most part this is what it's like for us. I don't get mad at them for this since it's not in a two year olds nature to sit quietly for 1.5hrs. But we leave each meeting feeling exhausted! Anyways, this is why we sit in the B school...notice the constant hum of whining.


We bring them books and cheerios, what more can we do short of bringing a dvd player?!

3 comments:

nan cee said...

In watching the video what can I say other than I can understand why you sit in the back room! I am sure the rest of the congregation appreciate it! Hang in there, the boys will eventually learn how to sit and pay attention and you will be able to get more out of the meetings!
Love to you all,
A.Nancy

Jessica said...

Looks like the solution is to clap more! :O)

Jonalyn said...

Yes, it gets harder as they get more active! They'll improve. :) It's just a matter of survival until then! Love the seeing them in their meeting clothes. So cute!